


Doing Fine

by willowbilly



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canonical Child Abuse, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Depression, Dorothy Walker's A+ Parenting, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Food Issues, Homophobia, Not as dark as all that makes it sound, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:13:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5279837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I just like to watch my weight,” Trish whispers, not making eye contact.</p><p>Jessica emits an extremely loud, dubious scoff. “Sure, of course,” she says, looking at the pair of them as they pick up their silverware and proceed to act as though there have been no interruptions. They’re both polished and clean with their expensive makeup and their dyed, blow-dried tresses beside Jessica in her slovenly sleepwear and musty, dragging blanket and cold bare feet with toenails that she needs to trim, and she suppresses a wave of exclusion and loss. This is not where she’s supposed to be.</p><p>And whose fault is that? Exactly?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

First impressions, right?

The first time that Jessica sees Trish, it's through her eyelashes. Some strange redheaded girl, around her age, and her mother busy bustling around her, fussing over vases of flowers and telling her daughter how much good press taking in some tragically orphaned charity case would be. The television behind them running some vapid, colorful images of the girl, dancing and smiling like a sweet little bubblegum starlet, wholesome and perky and pink-cheeked. The real-life girl, scrubbed of the gilt of performance, not dancing, not smiling, speaking up to voice her doubts. Talking about her as if she wasn’t there.

Heedlessly letting slip that her entire family was dead.

The girl catching sight of her, awake, and remorse crumpling her brow, her mouth open as though hoping that the right apology would occur to her so that she could offer it and fix everything, could take back what she’d said.

The mother pushing in front, leaning earnestly over her and telling her, with the most callous, falsest cheer she’d ever heard, so insensitive it seemed an intentional joke, that Patsy would save her. Like she should be delighted. Like she should throw aside her grief and exclaim _Oh, goody! It’s a dream come true!_

The world shattering, and the girl with it, everything bright and broken with tears.

 

 ~~~

 

Now, “Patsy” was by no means deliberately cruel. It was an accident. An unguarded slip of the tongue. She wasn’t a malicious or petty person.

But Jessica was. And from that moment onward Jessica hated her.

Hating came easily to Jessica. She was a natural. Found it effortless as breathing. Step one: find a reason to hate. It can be anything, anything at all, doesn’t matter how small. Check. Step two: don’t let go of the reason. Make it a grudge. A knee-jerk reaction dug in so deep that it would be harder to release it than to just cradle it close and let it fester. Check. Step three: sit back and watch everything go to shit. As it always does.

 

 ~~~

 

The first weeks living with them are a haze of mourning and guilt, monotonously dull days spent ensconced in her room. Lying in bed. She stops crying after a while, because it’s exhausting and dehydrating, but she also stops doing things like eating. And showering. Brushing the tartar-caked cesspool that her mouth becomes. Little things like that.

At some point the girl knocks on her door, calls her name, and then eventually comes in when Jessica doesn’t bother to respond from where she’s curled under the covers.

“Oh, thank goodness,” the girl says when Jessica stirs enough to crack an eye open and glower at her around the mound of her pillow. “I was afraid—” she cuts herself off suddenly and looks down at her feet as though ashamed.

 

“What?” Jessica growls. “Afraid I’d finally slit my wrists?” She wriggles for the leverage to stick both arms out of the bed, wrists up as though for inspection, or as though waiting for them to be encircled by the snap of handcuffs. “Voilà. Sorry to disappoint.”

“I’m not disappointed,” the girl volleys at her. She sounds offended, maybe. “Why would you _say_ something like that?” Concern suddenly infuses her features, and she takes a hesitant step forward, her hand drifting up. “Unless… are you… okay? Jessica?”

Jessica pulls her arms back into her cozy nest like a turtle into its shell before Patsy gets it into her pretty ginger head to try and hold her hand or something. God forbid.

“Hah. Yeah, whole family dead. My own fucking fault. Yeah, I’m okay. Hunky-dory. Just damn perfect.” She throws the blanket over her head to signal exactly how done she is with this pointless conversation, immediately nearly smothering in the warm, stale, sweat-scented air that enfolds her. The pillow smells like her armpits.

She hears Patsy girl’s feet shuffling a little on the carpet. “Why do you think the accident was your fault?” she asks softly.

Jessica runs what she’d spat at the girl through her mind and realizes what she’d given away. Just blurted it right out like it was nothing. Only her most terrible, wretched secret. Leaked unthinkingly to this _Patsy_ girl, of all people. She doesn’t even _like_ her. _Why_. “Fuck,” she groans, muffled but heartfelt.

“Hey,” the girl says. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I get it.” Jessica waits for her to leave, but after an awkward silence the girl continues reluctantly, “It’s just… dinnertime. And my mom told me to get you so we could all eat together.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jessica snarls.

 

 ~~~

 

Hatred isn’t strong enough to describe how much Jessica is repulsed by, despises, _loathes_ Patsy girl’s pimp. Oh, excuse her, _Dorothy Walker_. The woman is self-obsessed, greedy, overbearing, unsympathetic, a bad listener, and an even worse talker.

Jessica sees the way that her daughter flinches around her sometimes. Sees the bruises and hears the constant stream of needling and browbeating and criticisms delivered in a chiding _Mother_ _knows best_ sort of tone, and then in shouts of impatient anger if that fails. Jessica’s generally spared because Dorothy only considers Jessica to be part of the family when they’re in front of a camera or a recorder, so most of the time she’s left to her own devices. A prop to be pulled out, dusted off, and paraded around only as needed. So long as she keeps to herself and doesn’t make a mess they’re usually pretty content with avoiding each other.

Except tonight was one of the obligatory “family” dinner nights. Where Dorothy tried to pretend that she had things like, say, a conscience and a maternal instinct. There were more of these dinners at the beginning, when Dorothy still wanted Jessica to “Tell us all about yourself, dear.” Apparently the dinners were still gonna crop up every now and then. Joy.

The dining room looks like something out of a home magazine, chic and sterile. But then, that’s how everything else looks, too. There’s a small chandelier over the center of a round dining table, on which a carafe of ice water beads with condensation. Three plates sit on three woven placemats. Empty glass in upper corner. Napkin off to one side. One fork. One spoon.

Jessica remembers with a pang the time that her little brother tried to convince her that sporks were the ultimate two-in-one and therefore the superior utensil. She’d scoffed at the idea and called him a dweeb, and he’d subsequently eaten with a white plastic school spork for almost a month just to try and prove his point to her.

She’d said she was impressed and gave him a candy bar just so he’d finally quit it.

Patsy’s already sitting down, hands in lap and ankles demurely crossed, by the time Jessica is approaching her seat, her blanket draped around her shoulders like an adventurer’s cape and her greasy, uncombed hair pushed behind her ears.

Dorothy enters with her plastic smile fixed in place and a ready-bake lasagna in an aluminum pan balanced on her oven mitts. It’s fake homemade food this time, then. Gotta remember to show gratitude for all the hard work put into making it.

“Jessie! So glad you decided to join us,” she says, curtailing what was by now a familiar sniff of contempt at Jessica’s overall attitude and state of hygiene. “I have to nip back for the rest. Back in a blink.”

The lasagna is deposited in the middle of the table.

Jessica pulls her chair out slowly, the legs screeching against the hardwood. Patsy winces at the sound.

“Uh… looks good, huh?” Patsy ventures, trying for friendly but coming off more forlorn. Unsure of herself.

Jessica drops heavily into her seat, bumping the table and making the silverware clatter slightly. She cocks her head at the lasagna, marinara sauce oozing out around the edges of its crust of melted white cheese, the handle of the spatula sticking off to one side, and shrugs. “Whatever. I guess.”

“Okay then,” the girl sighs, mostly to herself, and turns to stare at the blank, shiny surface of her plate as though it’s a magic mirror and she’s itching for a miracle.

Dorothy reappears with a large bowl of salad and a smaller bowl of cooked kale that looks like so much green slime. “Dig in!” she says brightly, and Jessica wastes no time in grabbing the spatula and digging out a sloppy chunk of lasagna to drop onto her plate in a surge of mouthwateringly fragrant steam and a splatter of blood-colored sauce and little pieces of meat. Jessica relishes Dorothy’s look of open disdain before she visibly decides to ignore her lack of manners and serve herself a much humbler portion of lasagna to go along with her salad.

When Jessica glances over at the girl’s plate she just sees greens.

“Hey Patsy,” Jessica slurs through a full mouthful. The girl stops picking unenthusiastically at her kale and looks up as Jessica uses her fork to gesture at what she was eating. “No lasagna?” She was the one who’d said it looked good.

“You can just call me Patricia,” she says, with a little, faintly pained smile, as she purposefully overlooks the question.

“No, c’mon,” Jessica pushes. “You can’t live on freaking salad. What gives?”

The mother butts in helpfully as though fancying herself to be her non-mute daughter’s oh-so-essential mouthpiece. “Oh, Patsy is very conscientious about her figure. It wouldn’t do for her to gorge on a ton of carbs and fat.”

“Hey, no, I was asking _Patricia_ here why she has a pile of leaves and nothing else.”

Patricia shoots Jessica a brief hounded look and swallows, glancing back to her mother and huddling under the onslaught of Dorothy’s disapproving expectancy.

“I just like to watch my weight,” she whispers, not making eye contact.

Jessica emits an extremely loud, dubious scoff. “Sure, of course,” she says, looking at the pair of them as they pick up their silverware and proceed to act as though there have been no interruptions. They’re both polished and clean with their expensive makeup and their dyed, blow-dried tresses beside Jessica in her slovenly sleepwear and musty, dragging blanket and cold bare feet with toenails that she needs to trim, and she suppresses a wave of exclusion and loss. This is not where she’s supposed to be.

And whose fault is that? Exactly?

“Excuse me,” Jessica says, pushing the chair back with another harsh screech as she stands and loads another helping of lasagna onto the free part of her plate.

“Where are you going?” Dorothy asks sharply.

“Headache. Gonna go finish this in my room and then take a shower. Ma’am.”

“About damn time,” Dorothy snorts. “You’re excused.”

Patricia watches her go with her brow creased in concern.

 

 ~~~

 

Jessica does indeed shower, then waits until she’s pretty sure that Dorothy’s asleep before sneaking into Patricia’s room and edging the door shut behind her. Patricia stirs when her bedside lamp is clicked on and Jessica waits until she groggily rolls over to face her and holds a hand up to shade her eyes as she forces them open.

“What the hell, Jessica? Are you here to kill me in my sleep?” she rasps.

“If I was gonna do that waking you up would’ve defeated the purpose. Cold-blooded premeditated homicide 101. It’s just the goddamn basics. Here.” Jessica sets her plate of leftover lasagna on Patricia’s nightstand and whips the grease-spotted napkin off of it with a magician’s flourish. “Ta-fucking-da. For you.”

“Oh,” Patricia says, sitting up. “Uh…”

“And I even got you a fork. I’m so thoughtful,” Jessica says, pressing it into Patricia’s loose hand and curling her fingers around it.

“Jessica, I… already brushed my teeth.”

“And you can brush them again. You’re eating that.” She picks up the plate and passes it several times in front of Patricia’s nose as though it were still warm enough to waft its enticing smell. “Mmm. Yum.”

“But… my mom—”

 

“Screw your mom. You. Are. Eating. That.”

Patricia gapes incredulously some more before hesitantly reaching out and taking the plate. She balances it on her knee as she cuts a bite off with the side of the fork and brings it to her mouth, and stalls for a second before actually putting it in and chewing. When she does, her eyes roll shut and she makes an audible slurping sound as her deprived salivary glands go into overdrive.

Jessica smothers a pleased smirk and says only, “Sorry it’s cold.”

Patricia’s stuffing another forkful into her mouth like she’s afraid it’ll be taken away. Which it would be if Dorothy were to come in, the bitch. “No, it’s… I was starving. It’s delicious.” She pauses and giggles, her lips splitting into a kind of disgusting grin around her food. It’s the most genuine, unguarded expression that Jessica’s yet seen her make. “Thank you.”

Jessica realizes that something’s shifted under her feet when she wasn’t paying attention. Somehow, she doesn’t hate this girl anymore. She doesn’t even dislike her. It’s… weird. But… nice. “Whatever,” she says.

 

 ~~~

 

Jessica has never been what you’d call a social person. She’s never been good at making friends. Cliques were accessible to her, because there was always some catty group of emotionally stunted girls who wanted to talk shit, but they were all backstabbers. Not people you actually liked, and Jessica was pretty sure that one of those prerequisites for friendship was, in fact, _liking_ the person in question.

Under the suspicion that Patricia is somehow, now, possibly, a… friend, Jessica starts to take note of all the times that she finds something new to like about her.

Like the way she bites her lip when she’s thinking. How her eyebrow lifts when she’s listening or skeptical. The way she stands up to Dorothy sometimes, and yells back. Her hair, wet from the shower or mussed from sleeping. How she brings Jessica down to earth with her patient pragmatism. Her traces of independence. Of rebellion. Her good but gentle advice. Her intelligence. Her compassion. Her true smile.

There are endless things to like about her.

 

 ~~~

 

Patricia and Jessica are holding hands, walking behind Dorothy as she chatters away about upcoming appointments and contracts and brunches. Jessica’s not sure when they started this hand-holding, or which one of them initiated it, but even silly as it is, the casual intimacy linking them together feels more comforting than constricting. Patricia starts swinging their hands in time with their steps, childishly whimsical, and Jessica playfully shoves her with her shoulder. They start horsing around so much that they’re staggering from side to side and practically tripping over each other’s feet, and Jessica is reveling in Patricia’s smiling laughter until Dorothy snaps at them, asking “Patsy” if she’s even paying attention.

She turns around as she does and sees their hands clasped together, and she remarks with scathing humor, “Really? I didn’t raise you to act like a dyke with a crush, Patsy. Next you’ll be wanting to wear frumpy boy’s clothes and cut off all your hair!”

“No,” Patricia says, dropping Jessica’s hand as though burnt. Her smile has transmuted into something strained and fake. “That’s ridiculous, Mom.”

Jessica stuffs her fists into her pockets and watches the sidewalk passing underneath her boots.

 

 ~~~

 

Patricia starts to sleep in Jessica’s bed after the whole revealed-super-strength-to-Dorothy-via-brute-force incident. She says she’d freaked herself out thinking that her mom would take the chance to deal out some of her warped discipline when Patricia was alone, would corner her when Jessica wasn’t with her. It made it hard for her to fall asleep.

“Yeah, adrenaline’ll do that to you,” Jessica says. She’s claimed the side closest to the door and Patricia brought in her pillow and took up the other. They’re in their nightwear and lying down but haven’t turned the lights off yet. It feels like what Jessica imagines a slumber party would feel like.

“It’s just me being… I don’t know. Paranoid.”

“You? The paranoid one?” Jessica snorts. “Hah. As if. Hey, why don’t I just sleep in your room with you? It’s bigger.”

“It has Patsy merchandise and the color pink splattered all over it. It’s creepy.”

“That why you don’t like being called Patsy? ’Cause of that whole… thing?”

Patricia furrows her brow in consideration. “I think… yeah. Patsy’s like a whole separate person. The one Mom wants me to be. Like some fake, perfect version of me.”

“Do you actually like the name Patricia, though? It’s like some goody two-shoes doll’s name.”

She barks out a laugh. “It doesn’t really fit me, either. Does it?”

“Nope. You need a nickname. ASAP. Like right now.” Jessica narrows her eyes and purses her lips. Goes so far as to reach out and grab Patricia’s chin to turn her face into a better angle for inspection. “I dub thee… ‘Trish.’”

“‘Trish,’ huh? Why?”

“It’s the only other nickname for ‘Patricia’ that I can think of. That isn’t stupid.”

Trish, nee Patricia, shakes her head, chuckling as she tests the sound of it on her tongue. “Trish. Trrrish. Trish. Triiiish.” She gives a firm nod amidst another burst of stifled laughter. “Yup. I love it.”

 

 ~~~

 

Nightmares. Surprise, surprise… they suck.

Jessica’s found herself clawing out from the clutches of dark, twisted dreams several times, all of them related to the accident. Sometimes she sits like an extra, incorporeal passenger and watches as she quarrels with her brother and distracts her dad, silent and frozen and helpless to do anything but see it play out. Other times she’s filled with a hot, bubbling anger, and she is getting out of her seat, and is reaching over to the front and grabbing the steering wheel to smash them all into the semi with her own hands.

She doesn’t know which ones are worse.

This time, though, when she whimpers and twitches into half wakefulness, she feels Trish sliding over to hold her from behind and mutter drowsy reassurances in her ear until she can relax and fall back asleep to the slow, soothing lullaby of Trish’s breathing, surrounded by her warmth and weight and the scent of her shampoo.

 

 ~~~

 

Jessica discovers that she can sort of fly when jumping on the bed. One moment she’s pushing off the mattress with both feet and the next she’s flat on her back and looking up at the dent in the ceiling where she’d smashed her head into the plaster.

“Huh,” she says thoughtfully, and then adds with more verve, “ _Ouch_. What the ever-loving _fuck?_ ”

Trish was doing homework on the floor. Her textbook lies forgotten in front of her and her pencil falls from nerveless fingers as she stares at Jessica in shock. “You can _fly?”_

“I can’t _fly.”_

“Bull. I just saw you shoot straight up. You _flew.”_

Jessica wobbles into a sitting position and tips her sore head back to squint incredulously at the dent some more. “Well. Maybe.”

“That’s so _cool,”_ Trish enthuses, starting to grin. She seems slightly manic about the prospect. “Do you think you have any more powers you don’t know about yet?”

“Dunno ’bout powers. Might have a concussion, though.”

“Oh my god. Here, quick, let me check your pupils.”

They sneak out at dusk that weekend at Trish’s insistence and Jessica practices jumping. Like a flea.

That’s how she thinks of it. She can’t really hover or control her speed, after all, and she needs a solid platform to push off of; she can’t just turn it on in midair. Which they find out when Trish unexpectedly shoves her off a chair in the name of scientific inquiry. The trajectories always end up being arcs unless she starts at a high point like a building and drops down to the street, and the altitudes she can attain are mostly limited by how hard she’ll hit the ground. Too far up, and she’ll probably exceed the threshold of her durability and break something that she’d really rather not.

Still. It’s kinda awesome.

 _“Kind of?"_ Trish exclaims. “It is _fully_ awesome! I’d do anything to be able to fly.”

Jessica blinks at the envious admiration in Trish’s tone. “I could carry you,” she offers.

Trish’s jaw drops.

“I mean, we both know I’m strong enough. If you want. No big deal, right?”

“Jessica…” Trish’s eyes flutter like she’s trying to clear them of tears, and the corner of her mouth curls shakily upward. “You have no idea how big a deal that is. That would be— I’d _love_ that. Death by falling is a totally acceptable tradeoff.”

 

“I’m not gonna _drop_ you,” Jessica replies indignantly. “C’mon, I got this.”

They debate what sort of position would be best. Trish flat-out refuses both the bridal and the fireman carry— the first because it’s undignified and the second because “Are you _crazy_ , Jessica? No!” so they end up settling for the piggyback.

 

Jessica hitches her hands under Trish’s knees after she hops onto her back, and then, once she’s certain Trish is as secure as she’s gonna get, she starts jogging down the street, picking up speed like a locomotive before jumping onto both feet and launching them upwards. The air whooshes around them as they tear through it like it’s a physical barrier, making Jessica’s eyes water as the ground falls dizzyingly far away and their apex lifts them level with the satellite dishes at the tops of the buildings. Trish screams, piercingly high and a little scared and very exultant, and right into Jessica’s ear, but Jessica only cackles gleefully as the sidewalk rushes up to slap them and she meets it with her feet and leaps again, bearing Trish back into the night sky. Practically all the way to the stars.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Jessica isn’t the same after Killgrave, but Trish knows better than to expect that she would be.

After dropping off the face of the earth for months she shows up unannounced on Trish’s doorstep, bundled in what was once a rich fur coat, now marred by signs of wear and neglect and caked with grime. She says she’s been sleeping on the street for a while. There’s a haunted cast to her expressions and a jitteriness to her hands. A new tendency to glance compulsively over her shoulder like an animal which has lived too long in the shadow of the hunter. With her slender build and white, narrow face framed by its matted shroud of black hair, her large, hollowed eyes flickering with fear and her full lips dry and bloodless, Jessica looks like a wraith, tenuously surviving on stolen time.

She won’t let Trish touch her. Flinches away every time with an unmistakable look of self-loathing, as though she believes she’s something small and slimy that would dirty Trish upon contact.

Trish still manages to coax Jessica into sleeping in her bed, as they did when they were young. They build a barrier of pillows between them so that they won’t inadvertently roll against each other in the night. So that Jessica doesn’t lash out at the feel of another body beside hers.

Her nightmares are back. They’re even worse than they were in her childhood, and she’ll startle awake from them already screaming. She’ll sob for hours afterwards until it’s like she’s cried everything out of herself, leaving her an empty shell with dull, reddened eyes.

Trish comes back into the apartment one day to find Jessica lying on the sofa surrounded by empty beer cans and a couple whiskey bottles.

“Jessica,” she says, at a loss. She doesn’t know if she’s allowed, if she can bring herself, to rebuke Jessica for this.

Her head lolls back on her neck, the tendons in her long, slim throat standing out starkly against her pale skin. “‘S’fine, Trish. It helps me do fine. Softens all the… all the knives left in my brain.” She flops a hand at a nearby chair in invitation.

Trish approaches gingerly and sits.

“You remember I said it was my fault my family died?”

Trish nods.

“I never told you why. But I told him.” She gulps in a shaky breath, tears shivering unshed in her eyes. “He wanted to know all about me. Asked a shitload of questions. That you have to answer ’cause he’s the bastard asking them. Anyway. He asked if I had any siblings. Parents. Where they were. I said they all died in a car accident and he said ‘how terrible.’ And ‘how did that come to happen?’ And I just told him. How. In the car. I fought with Phillip. Broke his stupid toy. And Dad turned around to yell at me. And we crashed. Because I was bitchy and picked a stupid fight for. For no reason. God. Trish, I was… I was so stupid. So fucking stupid. Damn it. God _damn_ it.”

 

 ~~~

 

Trish gets the whole story. It comes out in bits and pieces, in hints that Jessica can bring herself to drag into the light. It sounds like a horrifying fairy tale of old. Not one of the ones where the fairy is a tiny flower-like creature with gossamer wings. One of the ones where a human falls under the supernatural thrall of a spiteful, mercurial being with a heart of ice.

Eventually Jessica agrees to see someone trained in psychiatry who knows what the hell they’re doing, but Trish thinks she probably still shares more with her than with the professional.

Ever so slowly, Jessica starts to pull the shattered remnants of her identity together and rebuilds herself.

She’s always been rather antisocial and prone to deadpan wittiness, but her sarcasm has been upped to eleven, and has gained an acerbic flintiness and an undertone of acid belligerence and distrust that wasn’t there before. The more she gets a hold of her issues the more she draws away, retreating into herself. Whenever her past tries to climb out of her mind she grabs a bottle and tries to wash it away with alcohol. She ends up drinking a lot, just so that she can close her eyes at night and actually get some rest, even if the form that her rest takes ends up being a drunken stupor. Asserts that a hangover is preferable to a pathetic crying jag. Trish’s concerns are met with harsh jokes or outright dismissals, and Jessica becomes much better at hiding the way she cringes at things that aren’t there. All that’s left of her playfulness, her spontaneity, is a bitter sense of pessimistic irony honed to a razor’s edge and a recklessness that drives her headfirst into danger like she doesn’t believe that she’ll feel the pain anymore.

Trish wishes longingly for her old friend back sometimes, and is then sick at herself for thinking it.

One morning Jessica looks up from her bowl of soggy frosted flakes cereal and Irish coffee and asks, “You still have that fur coat of mine?”

Trish remembers how Jessica had discarded it in a bedraggled heap on the floor in the entryway, and how Trish had retrieved it, folded it, and put it into a trash bag for storage in the back of her closet. She hadn’t known whether Jessica had wanted it saved and fixed up or not, and Jessica really hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to bother with such comparative trivialities at the time.

There had been traces of blood dried on the sleeve cuffs, clumping the hairs together into a stiff, muddy fringe.

“Yes,” Trish says.

“Great. Dig it up. I need fuel for a bonfire.”

Jessica cannot be swayed from this no matter its illegality. Trish ends up tagging along as Jessica finds what she deems to be an appropriately abandoned alley with a rusty burn barrel in which to stuff the mangy coat. She douses it with gasoline and drops in a match. It goes ablaze with an abrupt _whoomph,_ sending up a chokingly thick column of smoke and filling the air with the stench of singed fur and pungent accelerant set aflame. Jessica’s grim face is painted in low, guttering orange light which reflects in the glossy orbs of her eyes, eerie and diabolical.

The next week Jessica declares herself suitably recovered and self-sufficient enough to stop trampling all over Trish’s hospitality, and she moves herself out to go it alone.

The bed seems large and cold with her gone.

 

 ~~~

 

“I love you,” Jessica says, warm and honest as she looks past the monster’s shoulder as if he isn’t even there, casting her words straight over to Trish where she stands frozen in the chill water-side wind with the taste of Killgrave’s mouth still tainting hers, her heart only moments ago howling with desolation and rattling the cage bars of her ribs in desperation and anguish, and it is a triumph that reaches into Trish’s soul and lifts her into someplace where she will never be alone or hopeless ever again.

 

 ~~~

 

Luke Cage falls into step beside her as she’s walking to work one day.

“I’d like to talk with you about Jessica sometime.”

“Sure,” she says. “This evening over coffee okay for you?”

“Sure,” he agrees, and with an amiable wave of his hand he casually veers off without looking back.

They meet in a café but get their drinks to go, bringing them outside to nurse as they sit on a bench and watch the stream of pedestrians flow past.

“She misses you,” Trish tells him. Neutrally, neither an accusation nor a request.

Luke’s broad chest expands as he heaves a deep, slow sigh and reaches up to rub an eye with a finger, looking weary and resigned. “Yeah,” he says. “I know the feeling.” He pauses and squints up at the sun, a fuzzy point of bleak brightness in an overcast sky. “I just wanted you to pass along to her… my apologies. For not believing. And for… everything else.”

Trish thinks about the guilt and regret that she sees lurking in Jessica when she speaks of Luke, overtaking her fondness. Thinks of how much they came to mean to each other and how much they’ve managed to hurt each other even in so brief a time, and wonders how difficult it would be for them to heal the rift between them. “Why don’t you go back to her, then? Talk to her yourself.”

Luke curls his hands more snugly around the heat of his paper coffee cup and shakes his head. “No. Just tell her that if she ever needs a hand I’ll be there, but otherwise, for now, I’m gonna stay out of her way, and I’d appreciate it if she does me the same courtesy.”

Trish considers arguing against his decision and urging him to salvage what he and Jessica had together, but she forces herself to respect his decision and lets it go. It’s not her place to interfere. “Okay.”

He glances sideways at her and takes a sip of his coffee before saying, “She needs you, y’know? Everybody needs someone. Even more so when they have the number of demons she does. Be there for her.”

“Always,” Trish says, a quiet, fervent promise, the words _I love her_ echoing in her head, poised on the tip of her tongue.

 

 ~~~

 

Jessica arrives on her balcony in the rain during a power outage, tapping sadly against the glass, her brow knitted and lower lip pushed out in an exaggerated pout. She’s soaked, her hair flattened and straggling onto her cheeks.

“You look like a drowned cat,” Trish tells her, laughing as she goes to fetch towels from the bathroom.

“My place is leaking like a sieve. It’s like Noah’s freaking flood out there,” Jessica calls. Trish hears her removing her jacket and throwing it to the floor somewhere as she flops onto the sofa. “I am not joking, it’s all icy goddamn needles. I can’t feel my nose.”

“Tragic,” Trish bemoans sympathetically, and tosses a soft baby-blue towel over Jessica’s head.

“Apocalyptic,” Jessica corrects darkly from under the towel. She looks like a statue covered in drapery before she frees her arms and vigorously scrubs her hair a little drier until she works the towel all the way across her scalp and it falls off her head to rest around her shoulders like a mantle. Trish drops a fresh, folded towel in Jessica’s lap, and she takes off her boots and socks and uses it to wipe at her feet.

“Look at that,” Jessica says, pausing to wiggle her white, clammy toes. “To the _bone_.” The cold is making her move stiffly and the candles that Trish has lit and spread around on the coffee table and kitchen counter bathe everything in a soft golden glow and deep, velvety shadows, the smells of melting wax and cinnamon overcoming that of damp cloth. It seems very hushed without the usual omnipresent hum of power, the storm raging impotently outside. Jessica is completely sober and looks relaxed and well-rested for once, her hair tousled into a bird’s nest and her eyes half-lidded. Trusting. At home. At _peace_.

“Here, let me,” Trish says. She kneels in front of Jessica and takes the towel from her clumsy fingers, kneading it against the arch of her foot, her heel, wrapping it around to enfold her ankle.

“Trish?” Jessica murmurs.

Trish doesn’t answer. Moves to the other one, digging her thumbs into the ball of Jessica’s foot, hard enough even through the padding of the towel that Jessica groans at the sensation.

“Trish,” she says again, this time more a sigh, and she reaches down to catch Trish’s hands in her own, the towel falling, pulls them towards her chest so that Trish reflexively glances up.

Jessica’s face is infused with gentle adoration which verges on reverence, her pupils blown so wide that her irises look jet black. “I love you,” she says, curving her hand around the back of Trish’s neck in a cool caress that weaves her fingers into Trish’s hair. “I never say it and I should. All the time. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Trish whispers to her, with the simplest, deepest, utmost sincerity.

Jessica smiles faintly, a spark of mischief warring with insecurity in her eyes. “I love you,” she repeats, achingly tender.

Trish smiles back and plays along. “I love you, too.”

Jessica ducks her head with a huff of laughter that sounds a little choked with tears, and Trish lifts farther up, presses their foreheads together. “I mean it, Jessica. I love you, too. I love you.”

“Yeah,” Jessica says, a silken exhalation of breath, and meets Trish’s lips with her own, their mouths melding together in a warm, slick slide which stands as its own unspoken pledge. “Guess we’re in love, then.”

“Guess so.”

“It’s kind of fucking awesome.”

 _“Fully_ awesome.”

“Yeah. It really, really is.”

 


End file.
